Tootfinder

Microsoft will no longer allow Israel to use its cloud services to enable its mass surveillance of occupied Palestinians – "the first known case of a US technology company withdrawing services provided to the Israeli military since the beginning of its war on Gaza"

Israel used Microsoft's Dutch data centre for mass surveillance - DutchNews.nl
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/09/israel-used-microsofts-dutch-data-centre-for-mass-surveillance/

Sources: Microsoft terminated Israel's Unit 8200 access to Azure, after an investigation found the tech was used for mass surveillance in Gaza and West Bank (The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep

Microsoft has terminated the Israeli military’s access to technology it used to operate a powerful surveillance system that collected millions of Palestinian civilian phone calls made each day in Gaza and the West Bank
https://www.

Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its technology in mass surveillance of Palestinians | Israel | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/25/microsoft-blocks-israels-use-of-its-technology-in-mass-s…

«Apple has long facilitated and enriched mass surveillance through native apps, both directly from in-app activity, but much more insidiously through the In-App Browsers that Facebook tacks onto every link you tap.»
Apple vs. Facebook is Kayfabe - Infrequently Noted
https://infrequently.org/2025/08/apple-vs-fb-kayfabe/

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/09/pakistan-mass-surveillance-and-censorship-machine-is-fueled-by-chinese-european-emirati-and-north-american-companies/

Pakistan: Mass surveillance and censorship machine is fueled by Chinese, European, Emirati and North American companies
Pakistan’s unlawful mass surveillance and censorship expansion is powered by a nexus of companies based in Germany, France, United Arab Emirates (UAE), China, Canada, and the United States, Amnesty International said today in a new report “Shadows of Control”. The year-long investigation was carried out in collaboration with Paper Trail Media, DER STANDARD, Follow the […]

Swiss government looks to undercut privacy tech, stoking fears of mass surveillance
The Swiss government could soon require service providers with more than 5,000 users to collect government-issued identification, retain subscriber data for six months and, in many cases, disable encryption.
🇨🇭 https://

Swiss government looks to undercut privacy tech, stoking fears of mass surveillance
Swiss-based providers of secure email, VPNs and other digital services say a pending government proposal would be catastrophic to their ability to protect the privacy of users.

Swiss government looks to undercut privacy tech, stoking fears of mass surveillance https://therecord.media/switzerland-digital-privacy-law-proton-privacy-surveillance

Leaked docs: Chinese network-monitoring provider Geedge Networks has sold Great Firewall-style censorship systems to at least four countries, including Pakistan (Zeyi Yang/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/geedge-networks-mass-censorship-leak/

Massive Leak Shows How a Chinese Company Is Exporting the Great Firewall to the World
Geedge Networks, a company with ties to the founder of China’s mass censorship infrastructure, is selling its censorship and surveillance systems to at least four other countries in Asia and Africa.

another reason concrete is better than cameras. there are real solutions to traffic violence without making excuses for mass surveillance
https://sfstandard.com/2025/07/14/oakland-san-francisco-ice-license-plate-readers/

SF, Oakland cops illegally funneled license plate data to feds
SF and Oakland police appear to have repeatedly broken state law by sharing data from license plate cameras with federal agencies. OPD fulfilled a request related to an ICE investigation on one occasion.

You don't want to miss today's extra-packed Metacurity for the most critical infosec developments you should know today, including
--Microsoft enabled Israeli spy agency's mass surveillance of Palestinians' mobile calls,
--Cisco's registered web users disclosed in a likely Salesforce breach-related vishing attack,
--Google confirms customer theft in Salesforce breach-related incident,
--Broadcom chip flaw exposes millions of Dell laptops to attack, …

Microsoft enabled Israeli spy agency's mass surveillance of Palestinians' mobile calls
Cisco's registered web users disclosed in a likely Salesforce breach-related vishing attack, Google confirms customer theft in Salesforce breach-related incident, Broadcom chip flaw exposes millions of Dell laptops to attack, MSFT's Project Ire can ID malware with AI, much more

This is the perfect expression of a theme that never shows up in mass media:
Police are running out of legitimate work and are willing to invent new work solely to keep their jobs.
Crime rates have dropped precipitously over the past few decades, with some spikes around the financial crisis and pandemic. In a sane society, we would have also been reducing police budgets and headcounts
(See also: #Freikorps

Switzerland proposes regulations forcing service providers to collect user IDs and disable encryption, threatening its status as a haven for privacy tech firms (Suzanne Smalley/The Record)
https://therecord.media/switzerland-digital-privacy-law-proton-priv…

Swiss government looks to undercut privacy tech, stoking fears of mass surveillance
Switzerland-based providers of secure email, VPNs and other digital services say a pending government proposal would be catastrophic to their ability to protect the privacy of users.

Fascism is once again rising across the world, creeping in through surveillance capitalism, mass data harvesting, chat control laws, UK-style age verification, and endless new tools of digital censorship presented as safety.
Freedoms vanish piece by piece through biometric borders, predictive policing, restrictions on protest, voter suppression, book bans, and the relentless spread of authoritarian policies disguised as order. What seemed impossible a decade ago is now routine.
T…

Finally read #Cyberlibertarianism by David Golumbia and tbh I'm a little underwhelmed.
Seems like he thinks there's no legitimate criticism of the state and current democratic systems from a leftist point of view? Mass surveillance is fine since it's signed off by governments and if you think there's something wrong with that you must be rightwing and cyberliber…

This is just sensationally bad: Microsoft struck a deal with the Israeli secret intelligence arm Unit 8200 that allowed it to build a powerful new mass surveillance tool that collects and stores recordings of millions of mobile phone calls made each day by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians

Embodied AI: Emerging Risks and Opportunities for Policy Action
Jared Perlo, Alexander Robey, Fazl Barez, Luciano Floridi, Jakob M\"okander
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.00117

Embodied AI: Emerging Risks and Opportunities for Policy Action
The field of embodied AI (EAI) is rapidly advancing. Unlike virtual AI, EAI can exist in, learn from, reason about, and act in the physical world. Given recent innovations in large language and multimodal models, along with increasingly advanced and responsive hardware, EAI systems are rapidly growing in capabilities and operational domains. These advances present significant risks, including physical harm from malicious use, mass surveillance, and economic and societal disruption. However, the…

It’s frustrating and disappointing to see people, including governments, police, and others, misrepresent GrapheneOS and even Pixel phones.
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114784469162979608